it crawls along his back, static seeps into his head until it is blissfully blank. The sensation of the world around him forgotten until the tortures pass- until the punishment is done. But ament is free now. there is nothing to block out beside his own fear- his own failure.

it never felt like this before.

Now, each hesitance is shakey. The ocean in his eyes is iced over - predatory, keen. Just a little wiser where they once were not. He knows better- knows not to trust strangers, not to trust anyone but himself- but his pack. but his pack is gone there is no on left to turn to. Nothing left but freedom and-

freedom is a fallacy

but ament knows cages, knows by the iron collar clasped tightly around his neck, the rattle of the cut off chain that chimes - grates against the silence of this strange nest. (but it is not the desert.)

there is something familiar about it. Something soothing. He wants to venture further but the stench stops him short. Rot, lush vegetation, piss. A border, this is a border.

it's not in his nature to ignore someone in dire straits - they are after all, knocking at his door.

but what draws him more so than simply a possible death - a phenomenon usually easily enough handled by the many many shades in his service, unless one such soul merits the Reaper's personal interest - are certain marks - flavours, colours and the like - he can see in ones soul.

and there is a lingering trace on this one's soul that draws like to like.

he'd know his father's touch anywhere after all - a mark that screams to any who know to see that this one is family to the void shadow, the dreaded dark - and a ghost of wistfulness to the white reaper, for isn't it just like his father to adopt strays,

it seems he'd followed one brother's shadow here only to find another.

Azrayel is an old creature, like his sire and he knows languages dead and gone, so it's no suprise he can mimmick the chitters and it carries the same old pain in his voice Oh little brother, what's befallen you outside father's gaze and again there is an echo of memory - but he pushes the old pains away, that is not important in the now.

he makes a move, a gesture to indicate he wishes to snap the collar - and judging by the stench, he is ever so glad he joined his new haven's raid on the pitt, though now he wishes he had sucked the life from all their bones until naught but crumbling dust had remained (and perhaps here too does a little of his grandsire show through the bloodline, red does not haunt the reaper as much as his sire, but it is there nevertheless)

— Ament was a creature of wraith, and to him the after effects of such a burning sin was inconsequential to the thrill of it under his plumage. The rush of combat and the thrill of hunting. Nothing brought him to a more content than the high of it. Nothing could compare to such a natural state, a weapon to wield by his sister's side. Protecting, defending. With them he learned the calling off family, with them he learned pack.

( But pack was not here. Pack did not save him. )

he saved himself.

That wraith felt hollow now. He felt used, freshly burned out. Hollow like the after effects of something lethal leaving him. The claw marks on a training dummy. He feels used, raw and bleeding. chained.

a fight dog, they called him.

(Now he is just... Weary. )

It settles in his bones and it refuses to leave. He doesn't like it static settling in, wraith blending into his blood. Wait for the kill order wait for the-

Then, they speak.

They are not the only one to talk of the packs adopted mother. But it is the first time he can understand who they are talking about.

freedom is a sin he feels crawling on his back

"Mother left." Ament chirps back, his own tongue clumsy, his chirps fraying, and weak. he wasn't allowed to talk back. "Gone. Can't go back." he fumbles with the meaning. With trying to equate that his pack is not gone, but Ament is... Ament isn't who he used to be. He can't.. he simply can't.

"controlled... Not safe." that static , the feeling of someone else under his skin is wrong. it lingers there now, it fills his head and it mutes logic. Mutes him.

Not safe notsafenotsafenotsafe

He drawls back when the other comes to grab the collar. The purr turning into a Savage snarl that only quiets when he distances himself again. No- No. No one is allowed close to him. He taps the ground with his large taloned feet, a rhythm to a beat only he understands.

challenging, threatening. Ament does not feel any fear for the being before. One that drapes themselves in death. Ament has no fear for the aftershocks of wraith, no fear for the punishment he knows is swift to approach for leaving his family-

There is nothing to fear from a calm end, and if he meets his own today, then so be it.

It takes a few moments before Ament lowers down completely. Frontal limbs grazing the ground. His crest rises, not alarmed- brave and he snarls again. He doesn't attack, just waits.

he processes the explanation and feels the spines that decorate his forehead flatten slightly in dismay - Father (and he doesn't concern himself with the different use of parent synonyms, they are after all eldritch entities that merely chose which they felt better being - and he can attest to knowing how slippery that can be, Lilith often switched between the two and somedays none at all) who would he leave? unless-

ah yes, the date of the year and the suspicious almost similar yearly numbers would have conjured up that grief - and knowing his father, he'd rather rage and weep where none can be harmed by it - and likely forgot the passage of time in the process, such is their curse to blink and miss the lives that pass them by.

the despairing rage of the void shadow, is an ugly thing to witness - if one survives past the blinding grief fuelled god.

he's always been different from his kin in that respect - he deals with deceased daily and for the child that saw the dead long before duty befell, he has his own way and differing views on grief and passing.

but, he'll let father answer the unspoken question there - if he visits or if they visit him.

he relents when his little - newfound - brother detests letting him free him and backs off, far be it from he to deprive family of their own coping mechanisms, despite how it galls him to see them chained (he remembers Father's chains once - and those that tried to ensnare he and his siblings)

instead he waits quietly - ever patient, one thing descriptions of the Reaper have always gotten true - until he settles before speaking in that feral tongue again, shifting to gesture back the way he came "would you like to come back with me little brother?" he is new here, but he found Fenrisulfr's old house and reasoned he should move in - look after what War had left behind - and maybe it might be a comfort to the raptor, after all, they do share family

he hopes he might stay - it's been so very long since Azrayel has talked to family.

To say freedom was a lie wouldn't have been fully accurate. Freedom looked great from one side of the fence, that was certain. Why would people toss themselves onto battlefields with screams of rebellion otherwise? He found it amusing to watch the revolutions, both failed and successful, on the sidelines, watching bodies drop for whatever cause they devoted themselves to. Yet the grass was always greener on the other side. Freedom was nothing more than false hope. Freedom meant vulnerability. It meant bruises and fractures from attacks conducted by one's own "free" brethren. It meant anarchy and solitude and regret -- Beck would've much preferred to remain a canary in a birdcage, safe under the watch of its masters than to have been a wayward sparrow preyed upon by hawks and cats.

Rambling was useless now, however. A jarring shake of his head cleared the fog from his thoughts. He stalked through the swamp with a reason, although he could hardly remember why. Was he hunting for Audrey? Did he already feed the flytrap today? The little ghost paused mid-step in attempt to recover the current task at hand. His split brow knitted together slightly, and eventually, he flopped back on his rear in the mud, chewing on his remaining cheek. Distant clicks and growls snatched his attention away like an alligator snapping up a snack. Beck found his new purpose for his unintentional stroll.

A peek through parted cattails was enough to assure his interest in the outlandish noise. A real dinosaur! The colossal figure of their own personal reaper seemed to be conversing with the ancient creature. His freckled face scrunched at this. That wasn't fair! Why did he get to talk with raptors? Azrayel already got to be tall and scary and a dragon! A lower lip ragged from idle biting stuck out with a pout. The metal cuffed around the utahraptor's neck stirred some concern in the undead feline. His own wrists were numb to the feeling of the shackles tightly secured around them, but it only took a brief glance down at muddy paws to remind him. A flare of sympathy struggled within his chest, and Beck stepped from the shadows. He was much, much smaller than those present. But he wasn't confined to this pathetic form. His notched ear twitched before his head swiveled towards Azrayel. A wheezed request forced out of his lungs: "Can ya tell 'em we can take that thingy off or somethin'?" He pointed at Ament's neck, glaring expectantly at the eldritch creature.

— Ament aches for comfort, for something safe in a world now screaming of wrong. Ament has always defaulted to his own instincts, while his sisters always chose to think lesser of animals who didn't- ament had always seen worth in their curiosity. Now, now the feeling is more than he can bear. Instincts calling him home, telling him to flee and lick his wounds. Ament is stricken with them, an assault that shows in his features.

Feathers rumpled, uncleaned, dust and blood crusted along the talons at his feet, streaked through his muzzle. Old scars settled throughout parts of him, the one along his snout just a few days away from getting infected, open-bleeding-raw. This stranger seems to take note, or maybe it is in the tranquil brother's nature to offer aid to the dying. Ament feels his own posture relax slowly, muscles releasing the wire-tight tension of before.

Void-mother did not intentionally leave him, he knows the taste of grief that followed him; though Ament never could understand it before. Now without his sister's there is a part of him missing. Something that his keeper had stripped away at him in their time in his head. The memories are filled with static, the memories feel wrong.

(he wants to return, but he isn't sure the static will let him. doesn't understand why he feels he would hurt them, if he saw them then.)

The chain rattles with the moment as he slowly lifts himself from his crouch. Something in him eases, this- this stranger knows mother. Knows the Venadi, but he isn't asking him to return to them, he's telling him he can stay here.

"why?"

Curious creatures are always the quickest to endeavor themselves to him. Small tabbies and young predators still learning how to hunt. Even if Mori- the dubed silent brother of his, was unnerving in his patience. In his calm. Something Ament once found comfort in, not being prodded for answers, now he saw the caculative edge to. Now he saw intention and knew hurt.

Wrongwrongwrong.

Static was buzzing in his head again, the all to familiar feeling of being watched making his logic failing and instincts screaming. Large dew claws tap to the ground at the silence of waiting. The specter- makes an appearance but makes no move to talk to him. He feels his frustrations rise. Wraith so easy to him when he knew nothing else. Anger or static.

The other makes a geasture to the collar and Ament feels his lips curl. A flash of teeth is universal and he bends down lower to keep the chain closer to the ground. Easier to defend. - his.

Florence doesn't know much about the world around her. She's young, only bordering on apprentice age, and even so, she had only been allowed within the wooden walls of their cabin, knowing only drunken cursing and refuge out in the dying garden in the backyard. Fate had not been kind to her, but it was even crueler to this creature. She did not know this, though, walking forward with a puzzled look on her face and her doll tagging along--which she pulled closer when she saw that Beck was here.

She is uncertain about what's going on, wary of the large beasts and the way they speak to one another, communicating in a language foreign to her ears. She doesn't know what's going on, doesn't understand it, but her mother is telling her to stay back so she does, trusting both her mother's and her own judgement.

Freedom, as said, was bittersweet. She knew the fight for freedom, though she didn't understand it as such. She had struggled for her way out, an escape from her own blood, someone who should have loved but instead spewed hate. But that same escape had thrown her into a new world, unfamiliar territory with intimidating figures such as these. She had only one thing she held close, and as a child, that was all she needed.

So she stays away, silent, watching and waiting; for what she didn't know.

he knows the spectres approach before he speaks but Azrayel merely inclines his head to Beck speaking again in the natural current day language mildly ”something I would have asked when he felt more comfortable - and as you can see, he’s become attached to it” he suspects it will be a long while before little brother feels he can let go of this awful attachment - he won’t rush him, he knows the importance of your own realisations and epiphany’s,

Especially where freedom can be concerned.

Of course then his newest family connection speaks up and asks him why - and well, he could give many reasons, one, simply kindness, another simple gain of another member and another body to throw at the enemy so to speak - but the latter is the calculating cold approach and one Azrayel doesn’t entertain,

After all what use would a machination of that nature be to a creature who watches - and while he helps - mostly sees these small clan conflicts as what they are, small.

It gives you perspective when you’ve been on a gander stage - or when you are so long lived that you treasure the saving and prolonging of lives than the constant death of them - though He still sees the spirits and has struck deals with them before for the further continuing of living, he’s only ever asked fro service and always, always stressed the conditions - he is no Faustian devil.

So he merely 8nclines his head and answers in the ancient language ”because you need it, because you are family - blood or no - because I would like to know my littlest brother and maybe you would like to know the family you have never met - the only selfish reason I have is that I would like my family to live and be free in their lives and their choices” and maybe that’s incomprehensible but he is what he is - what reason does he have to watch others suffer or use them for his own ends when he has no ambitions or ends to meet when that one goal is all he wants - freedom and family.

He’s aware of another joining them - another new to the Tanglewood but she stays afar and he cannot blame that choice, he’s aware he is hardly the easiest to approach given. His size and appearance.

— At least, this part is familiar. The ogling. Nothing ever drove his sister's into more of a rage than getting watched, getting dissected with a pitying look that only sensibility has taught to those who seek it. Those who understand it. There is no mercy in him, no hesitance, either he kills or he doesn't. There is a choice, no matter how small it is for him, and it can be easily negated by pissing him off.

But getting watched never made him angry before, if anything it only made him want to watch back. As other's make themselves known- The ghost drifting lazily around Mori and the smell of another one on the wind- Ament let's his gaze drift, keeping both within sight. He is still weary of the other one, the hidden one. Though they smell of milk and blood, Ament knew better than to trust something small and frail.

The ghost didn't show himself completely, but what he didn't show Ament could see with the right angle, a twist of his head the the glimmer of metal- Ament understood. The ghost was not like him, but he too had been tied down, broken free by his own merits or choose to keep the chains as a reminder. It made him relax slightly, a low chuff escaping him, grabbing the other's attention as he deliberately shook his head, twisting enough to gather attention to his own collar. He wanted him to see. wanted to show that they were the same- if somewhat.

Ament was a creature of simple words, he even managed to pick up sparce common tongue, but his sense if nothing is small, more so now because if the static that laced it. Mental coercion leaving it's marks in the way Ament flinched at the others words. The way the sparce vocabulary Ament knew was more known to understand. Even if he heard it, comprehending them beyond the static was a struggle.

He was told he wanted to stay, wanted to be known. Mori - remeber. The name he choose was the right one for his older brother. And he feels the rest- the last of his tension melt at the words, the confirmation. Still.

"not little." aments words are stern, he cast a glance towards Beck, the general direction of the hidden one. No, hes grown he is bigger than he was before. Older, mother would be proud.